Design with Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters explored in new book

Date
27 January 2015

It’s fair to say I’ve got a bit of a penchant for design that utilises Chinese characters. I stumbled into a show of Japanese posters in Berlin about a decade ago and since then I’ve been hooked. So I’m pant-wettingly (sorry, terrible visual image) excited about viction:ary’s new tome, Hanzi, Kanji, Hanja, which offers a pretty comprehensive look at the use of Asian logograms in the world of branding and graphic design.

As the oldest system of writing in the world, the Chinese alphabet is more graphic in style than its Roman counterpart, using real-world objects as the basis for its hand-rendered marks. As such the variety of legible imagery that can be formed from this graphic alphabet is vast – as evidenced by the bug images below.

But it’s the novel pleasure of experiencing design in a language I don’t speak that really appeals to me. The quirks of a system of communication infinitely more complex than my own used to stunning effect by some of the most impressive design studios halfway across the world: I can’t be the only one who thinks this is great, right?

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viction:ary: Hanzi, Kanji, Hanza

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viction:ary: Hanzi, Kanji, Hanza

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viction:ary: Hanzi, Kanji, Hanza

Above

viction:ary: Hanzi, Kanji, Hanza

Above

viction:ary: Hanzi, Kanji, Hanza

Above

viction:ary: Hanzi, Kanji, Hanza

Above

viction:ary: Hanzi, Kanji, Hanza

Above

viction:ary: Hanzi, Kanji, Hanza

Above

viction:ary: Hanzi, Kanji, Hanza

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About the Author

James Cartwright

James started out as an intern in 2011 and came back in summer of 2012 to work online and latterly as Print Editor, before leaving in May 2015.

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